The present disclosure relates generally to key performance indicators in the monitoring of business operation and, in particular, to systems, methods and computer products for generating calculation context classes from a relationship between structured data and a calculation procedure, the context classes having parent-child relationships.
There is an increasing need for systems that monitor business operations on computers. Examples include a system that automatically calculates KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) such as order processing time from events generated by an order receiving system and periodically sends reports and alerts to personnel in charge. In such a system, the kind of data to be monitored with the kind of calculation procedure must be defined.
If context classes are in a parent-child relationship, the relationship between the parent context and child contexts in number at run time is 1 to N and they can refer to each other's variables. The parent-child relationship between contexts enables state variables and calculation procedures to be shared between them, which can improve the efficiency of memory use during runtime and the efficiency of management of redefinitions and lifecycles of context classes. To design context classes using current techniques, it is desirable to have knowledge of KPIs, which are high-level definitions provided by professionals such as business consultants and computational expressions of the KPIs. Engineers who design context classes often do not notice state variable or calculation procedures that can be shared between contexts and define them separately in different context classes, thus resulting in duplication of descriptions, which create difficulties in modifying and managing context classes. In addition, designers often forget to define parent-child relationships. Therefore, a context class including a calculated KPI can contain a semantic error although they have assumed a reference relationship between variables of context classes when designing the context classes.